People who watch television, listen to the radio or read newspapers and magazines often have a desire to hear more about the subjects they are learning about and to share their own ideas on the subjects with others. A prior method for meeting this desire is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,839,417 of Weisman. The Weisman patent discloses a method and apparatus that allows individuals to initiate, join, manage, and participant in topic-based conference call programs. Such calls may be continuously on-going or awaiting participants (e.g. a channel based on a particular sports team). The conference calls may be pre-scheduled and promoted (e.g. a panel discussion, post-game discussion group, or a book club), or they may be ad hoc. In some cases, conference calls according to the Weisman patent would be available exclusively to subscribing participants. Participants in the system can report inappropriate behavior and offenders can be blocked from further access to the system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,435 of Barber et al. is directed to establishing calls between parities who have a similar interest, but do not know the identity or telephone number of the other party. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,931,114 of Martin discloses a system and method for providing voice chat services over telephone networks. It can enable a plurality of telephone users to have voice communications among themselves without revealing their identities or telephone numbers. A caller in this system can access the chat service by dialing a telephone number that is associated with the system. When the caller (the subscriber) is connected to the system it routes the caller to a chat room in which he can participate as a chatter, contributing to a topic of common interest among all the chatters in that chat room. In entering the system the subscriber can be initially offered a “main menu,” at which the subscriber is allowed to select from among a plurality of main topics, each of which is associated with a chat room or channel. The conference operations use live agents to monitor conferences, encourage discussions and answer questions.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,772,436 of Doganata there is shown apparatus for enabling TV viewers to participate in audio conferences that are linked to the programs that they are watching, without the need to dial in to a conference call. The apparatus enables TV viewers to participate in audio conferences that are linked to the programs that they are watching by simply pushing a button on a remote control device resulting in an automatic dial out to an audio bridge. Depending on a remote control button being activated, the system enables switching of the user's telephone line among different conferences without having to dial a second conference call number.
Various news media, such as CNN.COM or NYTIMES.COM, often run online polls or questions related to the content of news articles on their websites. Further, in the 1980s, Byte Magazine ran online forums, recorded them and published summaries of them in their magazine.